Sunday October 16th, 2022

The exercise:

Write about: a harvest.

Drove down to Osoyoos for a slightly delayed Thanksgiving get together on the farm. Before dinner I helped with the pumpkin harvest in the garden, along with the boys and their cousins and Kat's parents.

Though by the end it was down to me, our eldest niece, and Kat's mother. You'd think working in the garden in mid-October in twenty degree weather was somehow problematic to the kids (at least Kat's father was keeping busy in the kitchen preparing the evening's feast - which was also where Kat could be found for most of the afternoon).

Thursday November 12th, 2020

The exercise:

Write about: the collection.

Monday May 9th, 2016

The exercise:

Write about: the collection.

Spent the day with Max, as Kat had an online course to attend from 10 to 2 and our eldest had soccer class at 3. After soccer we dropped by daycare to collect Max's things, because we're pretty sure that experiment is over.

We'll see. It might end up just being a break. But I can't imagine at this point him ever wanting to go back. And that's okay. Daycare served its purpose, which was helping us get through Kat's pregnancy and the early days with Miles (though not so much with the latter).

Miles will officially be 4 weeks old in a few hours and is just three days from being a month old. Not sure how that happened so quickly, but here we are.

The plan is to have Max with Kat's parents two afternoons a week (same as now, just different days), playing with Natalie at her house one afternoon a week, and playing with Natalie at our house one afternoon a week. That leaves me with him for one afternoon (likely Thursday for blast ball). Which likely will be tough after spending a morning working at the bakery, but it certainly could be worse.

I think it'll work out fine, with the added bonus of not having to drag him out the door to daycare twice a week. So... hurray, I suppose.

Mine:

"Would you like to view my private collection?"

It had seemed an innocent enough question. The invitation came from a kindly old man who wouldn't intimidate a fly. To say that I felt safe with him, despite having met him only an hour previous during the convention's introductory soiree, would be an understatement.

So I said yes. The wine glass in my hand was still half full and hadn't been topped up since I'd started nursing it shortly after I'd arrived. Can't blame the booze, then. I suppose you could say that I, being new in the city and having not yet made any friends, was simply looking for some company. And something to do other than return to a cold, echoing, and empty apartment.

He was rich. That much any idiot could have figured out from twenty paces. He seemed harmless enough. Almost grandfatherly. And not like my mother's father, who was too fond of the drink and had a mean streak wider than Broadway. Like a grandfather whose knee you'd sit on and have him read you a bedtime story or ten.

Was I too naive? Perhaps. Surely I trust too easily, but that's not always a bad thing. What I need to learn from this, I think, is not hostility towards strangers or to always guard myself with a shield of suspicion. It's to ask more questions before agreeing to do anything.

Like, in this case, I could have asked something along the lines of, "And just what sort of collection is it that you have to show me?"

Too late now, clearly. But maybe it'll save me an awkward tour of an old man's vintage lingerie collection next time around...